Consumed By the Fire
by AAPeterson
Summary: Aemeni is being slowly consumed by the Fire God's personality, doomed to become one of his avatars. Already she has changed drastically from her original self.
1. Chapter 1

**Chapter 1 - Fire Hero or Fire Maniac? What about both.**

"I'm a delivery girl. The only thing is, I deliver fiery destruction to villains of Paragon city. The warriors are my favorite, they stand around pumping themselves up. They all look inward at a leader practicing drills or whatever, and they don't notice..."

Aemeni raises her hand, and her body pulses blue twice then streaks of red flash out all around the warriors. They start to turn around while the leader says, "Get her!" and Aemeni breaths fire in very wide swathes felling the minions. The boss approaches her ready to strike.

Aemeni's hand pulses blue and the boss goes flying, she streaks fire after him and he falls. Seconds later Aemeni leaps into the air on the prowl for more targets of opportunity.

"The only problem is, I'm being transformed by the essense of pure fire, a somewhat god like being that has no direct physical existence but can project himself psychically. The fire god sets up his avatars and gives them extra power. Six months ago I was a regular...well almost regular person with a minor ability to use fire, kinda like in Stephen King's version. The firestarter ain't got nothing on me now.

The fire god took notice, and he's been redirecting how I do things, how I dress. Its all blacks and reds now, I used to wear blues and greens and skip about like a fairy princess or something. It was just suggestions originally. Like listening to a subliminal tape, I knew they weren't my own thoughts.

Then I started to fail to distinguish between his suggestions and my own thoughts. Finally I started to really get into it. People say fire is always a bad thing, a destroyer. Well I destroy evil, whatever you may say of my methods. Sure the fire dudes got some big evil, like that archvillain inferno whose under his thumb and got so powerful that way. But hey, I've stopped being so concerned about good and evil ever since I starting going along with his ideas.

Undead, they don't like fire, too bad they've got some nasty moves. I've been encased in rock dozens of times, knocked on my butt hundreds. And been to the hospital more than I can recall. Nonetheless I don't think like your everyday superhero. Every time I see those warriors standing there, having a meeting, or maybe 2 dozen council doing nothing, its time to move into action.

The Pantheon, those undead guys, they don't stand still very long. They always stand too far apart too. Inevitably I'll get stuck by one of the magic leaders and have to repel hordes of them standing a few inches away.

Sometimes I work with superheroes, but they never seem to share my sense of joy at large business meetings or overtime. Every extra soldier the council place on alert, is another target of opportunity from my perspective."

Aemeni lands from her superjump...in the wrong place, six Tsoo start hacking away at her, then a yellow ink man holds her in place. She struggles to get away. Flying up and away from them. She lands a small distance away and starts flinging the fire. A Tsoo Sorcerer arrives and sends her flying...into the hospital. The medibot teleported her there just as the sorcerer was to finish her off.

Sitting on the medical chair she says, "I'm sure his godliness loves watching me wipe out. He says there's a few more phases left for me to go through. He hasn't shown me everything he'll give me. A few more months and I'll even be sneezing fire I think."


	2. Chapter 2

_Disclaimer: Cryptic Studios owns the rights to City of Heroes, a massive multiplayer online game. Used here without permission. Even is a character of Josh Dexter, all other heroes are my own characters, except when explicitly stated otherwise. Villains are all the property of Cryptic Studios._

**Chapter 2 -** **Dark Astoria**

"I've adopted Dark Astoria as my home for now, its rather vacant of citizens and superheroes, though I catch one through the darkness sometimes. And it has a hospital, which is a nice feature, when you wake up in the morning to an Avalanche Shaman.

He, (or it?) managed to wrap me in a harsh cocoon of rock, so when I woke up, all I saw was that. I tried to burn through it but it wouldn't go away until it did on its own. There at the end of my bed was an Avalanche and Death Shaman. They may have been planning to use me as a zombie, only they forgot about the emergency hero teleporter, although one questions whether the signal would have penetrated that rock.

I'm still lying on the bed when they turn to me, I leap up into the air and land inches from the Avalanche Shaman. My policy is I'm deathly afraid of the Avalanche and only a little afraid of the death men. I don't take well to being encased in rock.

Unbeknownst at the time to my patron, the fire spirit or essence, I have some powers not related to fire. I can send a surge of pure energy through a target with a big punch. And that's what I did. This energy punch is effective for moments such as this, because it really knocks them on their ass.

I whiff however, bad news. Lets take a moment to stop time and talk about the Avalanche and me. I have certainly become one of the biggest enemies to the banished pantheon since I took up residence in Dark Astoria. But they have an easy solution to stop me, by stacking the deck with more shamans. The grunts of the pantheon are short work by fire, but the shamans kick me around like a bouncer throwing out an underage kid.

Its not all hopeless though, when it comes down to me vs an Avalanche, its all about the quick draw. Face to face without his little helpers, he's not got much of a chance, unless of course, he catches me napping. Ever since I learned how to blaze fire, I bring that extra kick ass fire down on the avs. The times I visit the hospital the most is when I think there are no shamans and then they show up at my weakest moment.

Back to that bedroom in Dark Astoria though. After I whiff with my kick, the Avalanche Shaman calls out and the husks and various other undead minions surround me. One thing they are good at is pummeling at close range. The shaman stops me from going anywhere from his earth trick, and I end up in the hospital a few minutes later.

Now I have no idea how they've kept the hospital from falling to the undead, and someday I expect to see undead doctors in there, but for now, it is operational. The doctor tells me I really shouldn't be putting myself in so much danger, but its not like I can stop. Not only would I be bored out of my gourd in a week, but that fire spirit would be after me, I'm sure infernal would be ringing my doorbell.

There are other threats in Dark Astoria, much rarer ones. In one case, the Circle of Thorns likes to cast a lot of spells on rooftops. There are a lot of really dangerous enemies in the thorns, those big ghostly boss dudes can pummel me, and every fully certified mage has a way to really ruin my day.

When I approached the outside of my apartment building (I had made my home many stories up in one of the old skyscrapers in DA to be a bit safer than a ground floor apartment), I found the circle of thorns standing outside the entrance to the place. Now that was a bit odd. Thorns and Pantheon working together?

It seemed the Dark Astorian Villains had decided to remove me from their city for good. And they knew exactly what my weaknesses were, and where I lived. 2 Spectral Daemon Lords, 2 Ruin Mages and a whole formation of Spectral Knights were guarding the entrance. This was not good. My first inclination is always to charge in and go all out, but with 4 very tough villains guarding things might be ugly. So I went around back and leapt up 10 stories, and tried to blast through the window, it took a few tries.

Entering, I checked quickly for any villains on the stairwell, and went up. 11, 12, 13, 14, 15th floor. I opened the door from the stairwell and obviously someone had been leaning on it, I heard an "oh shit as they went tumbling and the door opened.

I looked and was starting to attack, when I noticed he was neither, Circle of Thorns, Pantheon or the third common villain group in Astoria, Tsoo. He said his name was irrelevant but went by the superhero name Militia Sniper. I told him it sounded more terrorist than superhero but he laughed it off.

He said, 'I don't really like it here, but I got a big tip from Elite that one of our finest fighters against the pantheon was being set up to take a fall, so I came here, and noted the guard at the door.'

Militia Sniper carried a custom modular rifle and wore military battle armor. I blushed when he described me as one of the finest fighters against the Pantheon. I suppose a little of the old me from before being a fire disciple came out then.

We heard voices as we neared my apartment, 'Well, the hospitals need to be taken down, or we can't make any gains.'

'Leave that to me, they should be down there accosting Aemeni and taking control of the hospital now.'

'Smash', The sound of glass breaking inside the apartment compelled Aemeni to open the door.

'I know what you're doing. And I've come to stop it,' said a black and green outfitted superhero who had come crashing through the window. He wasn't wearing much more than his tights.

'Aemeni, my name is Even, and I'm here to help.' Even said, looking quizzically at Militia Sniper.

TO BE CONTINUED


End file.
